I’ve been play testing a bunch of battles today. It’s scary how many times you need to play a scenario to even be sure it poses a proper challenge. I think I’m maybe half way there, in terms of the two extra maps.
When I make the scenarios, I try to put together a fleet that will put up a bit of a battle against all the existing races. Everyone has their favorites, and ideally nobody will be able to just cakewalk through the two new missions on all 3 difficulties without tweaking their fleets.
The new race has short range but rapid firing weapons, and has to basically charge right up to the enemy and bombard them at close range. This can be a surprisingly good tactic for big cruisers, especially against fleets which rely on missiles and plasma. You might think that getting in close helps the enemy, because it means the missiles hit quicker and can be relaunched, but if you can get close enough, you can be inside the enemy cruisers minimum range.
For this reason, I think people are underestimating how helpful decent engines can be on frigates and cruisers. Many people assume you can sit at maximum range and bombard the enmy at your leisure, but I recommend people experiment with fast moving close-attack ships. Especially if you try the new race :D
The testing will take a while, because as well as two new scenarios and 12 new ships, I’m also introducing kinetic weapons, which in manyways are just pulse lasers with invisible bullets (albeit with their own visual effects), but they work differentl under the hood, because I need them to be rapid firing, but quick to process. Anyway, all the issues with the code for that stuff seems to be fixed now :D